Chapter 467: Chapter 393: Long Night Fortress
Northern Border, Long Night Fortress, Azure Sky Route.
Although it is called a route, when the steel city walls of the Long Night Fortress rise a hundred feet high, it appears not much different from a moat. The sky here is perpetually overcast, with no glimmer of light piercing the clouds for millennia.
A resounding, ancient horn echoed across the city walls, and within a quarter of an hour, over two hundred thousand messengers returned to their posts, ready for action. A dark cloud surged from the horizon, becoming clearer and more massive as time passed, blotting out the sky, covering everything, flowing like mercury.
It was the demon horde numbering in millions!
They were like prisoners freed after ten thousand years, joining their frenzied malice with the never-ending blizzards of the Far North into a destroying torrent capable of engulfing everything. They would demolish every structure in their path, trample every living creature they encountered, draining every drop of blood from this land!
Buzz, buzz, buzz—
Like dull thunder, the horn sounded the prelude to battle, with over a hundred thousand bed crossbow arrows shooting out explosively, further detonating among the demon horde, forcibly halting their charge. Successive volleys significantly reduced the demon horde by nearly a fifth.
Don’t underestimate the quantity; these demons were at least Foundation Establishment level. The operators of the bed crossbows were over three hundred thousand mortal messengers, and the makers of the crossbow arrows were millions of mortal craftsmen, spanning eighteen cities with tens of millions of citizens. Resources were deployed from thirty-eight military towns. The work of an entire half-year was to break the vanguard of the demon horde in this moment!
When the distance between the demons and the Azure Sky Route narrowed to one arrow’s range, the Foundation Establishment Commanders standing on the city walls also began to show their might. The city walls were built so high not just to block the flying demons but to give the Foundation Establishment Messengers a broad spell-casting view and a safe casting distance. Various divine techniques descended like celestial tribulations at this moment!
Heaven’s thunder and earth’s fire, a battle between gods and demons!
Chaotic Dao Patterns began to randomly spawn calamities on the battlefield, disasters giving rise to more disasters, chaos breeding chaos, transforming the entire area into a hopeless land. Yet this still couldn’t stop the demons’ steps, leaving only three hundred, two hundred, one hundred, fifty paces between them and the Long Night Fortress. Their numbers were so vast it seemed they could stretch their necks and step onto the Azure Sky Route, climbing the Long Night Fortress!
At this moment, a ship set sail from the eastern end of the Azure Sky Route. The ship was small, with only one person aboard who appeared diminutive before the swarming demon legion, like a lone boat amid a tsunami.
The nearest demons had noticed him, charging and leaping to be the first to draw blood. The person on the boat showed a bland expression, his eyes slightly narrowed, as if half asleep and half awake.
"Ice-blocked River." He gently said.
The river water instantly transformed into sharp, hard ice spikes, thrusting through the demons’ bodies, freezing and extending the demons’ blood to consolidate more ice spikes. In the blink of an eye, the spikes stretched dozens of feet, skewing the demons rushing forward together!
The lone boat sailed rapidly along the Azure Sky Route, spreading ice spikes wherever it went. The sailing speed grew ever faster, and the ice spikes’ thrusting accelerated. By the time the small boat reached the far west of the Long Night Fortress, ninety-five percent of the demons on the snowy field were dead, and the surviving demons couldn’t breach the ice spike barricade, left to the sniping from the bed crossbows and cleansing by the Foundation Establishment.
"Wangbai Immortal Monarch."
Just returning to the city walls, Wangbai Immortal Monarch saw a subordinate fly over to report: "Longevity Heaven has been looking for you several times; the Mountain Lord hopes you can attend the outside meeting as soon as possible!"
"Understood."
Wangbai Immortal Monarch stepped off the wall, conjured void ice surfaces in the air, and after two or three steps, he traversed the blizzard. Crossing an unseen boundary suddenly made the sunlight shine intensely, warmly comfortable, and the snow instantly disappeared. But right behind Wangbai Immortal Monarch, the majestic Long Night Fortress remained shrouded in dark snow, with even its candlelight dim and likely extinguishable at any moment.
Separated by a line, two worlds.
The legion camp was just below; staying a few days at the Long Night Fortress was fine, but longer would overwhelm even messengers, requiring a sunlit and warm place to replenish energy. Wangbai Immortal Monarch did not descend but stood atop the camp’s clock tower, taking a jade talisman from his chest and letting his divine sense penetrate it.
"Hey, hey, Wangbai, have you arrived?" A loud, careless voice from the jade talisman vibrated in Wangbai Immortal Monarch’s mind, prompting him to place it far from himself: "What is it?"
"Since everyone’s here, I’ll skip the pleasantries. Do you know about the Treasure Pavilion? The platform opened by the Treasure Hunting Order, someone started selling on it last month, but everyone was too busy to check it out. Just now, at midday, a large batch of items went up on the Treasure Pavilion, including a package of two hundred demon materials! Wangbai, you understand what this means, right?"
"I understand." Wangbai Immortal Monarch glanced over at the distant, overcast Long Night Fortress: "If we can find the Treasure Pavilion Master, the corpses of the million demons slain by the Long Night Fortress can be utilized."
Demons had a peculiar connection with Secret Realms; as long as they remained within, they wouldn’t decay. But once beyond, the bodies rapidly deteriorated. Even with the Extreme North Icefield as a preservation base, the vast land made transporting and selling the demon materials difficult before they became mostly spoiled.
There were solutions, some divine techniques that preserved demon materials but Foundation Establishment practitioners weren’t common, so how much could they handle? One could make finished products to sell, but the volume was immense, and even with hundreds of dissection workers and craftsmen at the camp, they’d only process a fraction with less than one percent utilization.
A platform for massive, distant demon material trade would turn Long Night Fortress’s resources to gold. Northern Border invested unknown manpower and resources yearly into Long Night Fortress, with the three Immortal Monarchs of Longevity Heaven taking turns every three months, yet the input-output ratio remained strained. The only solace was training many elite messengers, and maximizing Long Night Fortress’s output could lead to a Western Border messenger quality boom.
"Is there a way to find out who owns the Treasure Pavilion?" asked Wangbai Immortal Monarch.
"No!" replied the Longevity Celestial Mountain Lord firmly: "Our place lacks many Wisdom Dao Immortal Monarchs, most Life Divine Techniques of Foundation Establishment Messengers are for scheming rather than divination."
"If a Wisdom Dao Immortal Monarch could locate the Treasure Pavilion Master, it wouldn’t be ours to use anyway." Another voice from the jade talisman interjected: "The Treasure Pavilion is immensely significant to major forces. If we can’t have it, we mustn’t let others have it either!"
"Don’t try to block the flood, Master Chi." The Mountain Lord chuckled: "If the Treasure Pavilion, silent for eons, really does change drastically, we should welcome and join it, not fear it."
"We don’t need to monopolize the Treasure Pavilion, just participate in its trade. The Emperor hopes Longevity Heaven will bring blessings to the Northern Border, not stagnation. Capitalizing on this opportunity may allow the Emperor to advance as well. Who is free to explore and find this Treasure Pavilion Master? Deep Blue?"
"Only two months left for the White Wolf Mountain Secret Realm." A proud voice responded: "And such trivial matters aren’t suited to me."
"I’ll go." Wangbai Immortal Monarch declared: "Having just passed the terrestrial disaster, I can be active outside for up to three months."
"Then it’s up to you."
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